


One Lone Candle

by Skywalker



Series: boy on the cloud/one lone candle [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 07:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skywalker/pseuds/Skywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-apocalyptic, Titans-victory AU. Percy and Luke lead the last demigod on a quest to restore the Olympians and their lost civilization. Sequel to "The Boy on the Cloud."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Girl

**one lone candle**

" _Though this is the end of the age of heroes, it has saved its best for last..._ " (Matthew Stover)

 _ **i. the girl**_ _  
_  
"I'm Clio," she says, helping him to his feet. "Like the mood of history."

"The muse of history," Percy says, finding himself in the unprecedented position of correcting someone  _else_  on the finer points of the Olympian pantheon.

Her brow furrows. "Really? Andy always said 'mood.'"

"Really." He stretches his sleep-stiff limbs, waking up muscles unused to more than watching and waiting.

She brushes the mishap aside with a wave of her palm. "So what's the plan, hero?"

"Percy," he corrects, snapping his neck with an embarrassingly loud crack.

Her brown eyes go a little wider. "I didn't know you had a name."

"Who doesn't have a name?"

Clio shrugs. "The legend just says there's a boy on a cloud waiting to save the gods."

Percy shakes his head, looking at the celestial bronze cuff still clamped to his ankle. "That's just a story Lu– Scar told."

"So?" she says, brandishing her ballpoint pen. She uncaps it into a familiar long blade, and holds it as though she's been training all her life. Percy supposes she has, if the country is still swarming with monsters. "He was right about this sitting in the city and he was right about you being here."

"That doesn't mean I can save the gods," he protests. "I've been  _stuck on a cloud_  since the fall of Olympus."

"But you're a hero! You know about – quests and stuff!" She fixes him with an intense stare, with a flicker of Nico and a stage-whisper of Thalia. "You  _have_  to help. Or…" She frowns as though looking for the right words. "Or just tell me where to start."

"Where to start a quest?" He realizes, unexpectedly, that he  _does_  know that. It's out on Long Island, just at the edge of what he can see. "That I can show you."

She leads him through the ruins of Mount Olympus, but it's slow going. Percy stops to stare at every broken statue, and finds himself telling Clio everything he knows about them. When they pass through the throne room, he recites all the Olympians gods and goddesses, matching them to this wreck and that. She listens intently but impatiently, eager to get on with things. Demigodly ADHD, it seems, has survived the end of civilization pretty well. At one point, they find a slender sword of celestial bronze; Percy picks it up and carries it until he finds a mostly-intact sheath. It doesn't feel right in his hands, but he's noticed that the pen sits comfortably in  _her_  pocket without returning to his, and knows that Anaklusmos has found a new wielder. He finds that he's alright with that, somehow.

Clio's grown a sturdy looking vine across the chasm to the elevator, and swings across it with practiced ease. For a heartbeat, Percy considers simply jumping to the ground below, testing the curse of his immortality, but she looks at him expectantly and so he follows her across her impromptu bridge and down six hundred floors to the streets of New York.

He's known, for a long time, that humans left the city years ago, handing it over to the monsters and plants and animals. But there's something gutwrenchingly different between watching it from the side of Olympus and standing at the base of the Empire State Building. There are no cars, no conversations, no honking, no roaring engines, no ringing cellphones. The air is crisp and clean.

"There used to be so many people here," he says. "Eight million people."

"So I've heard," she says, but he's pretty sure she has no way of imagining what New York used to look like. Luke would, but… "We have to keep moving. There's monsters all around here."

She finds them a motorcycle after a scuffle with a handful of snake-women, and revs it to life with a little cube tossed into the gas tank and a strange looking key that twists effortlessly into the ignition. "Hephaestus and Demeter," she says. "biofuel for any engines we could find, and a skeleton key for just about everything. Hop on."

It's the fastest trip Percy has ever taken across the city. Without traffic, the only obstacles are wandering monsters chasing the sound of their engine. Percy dispatches them without a scratch to himself or Clio or the bike, and they tear out onto the expressway and towards Half-Blood Hill.

Thalia's pine is still standing, though the Golden Fleece is nowhere to be found. Percy places his hand against its bark and inhales the clean scent of it until Clio calls him down the hill.

"What are we looking for?" she asks, scanning the overgrown woods.

"The Big House," he says, then corrects himself. "A ruined house." He leads the way through past the old amphitheater and the open-air pavilion with its bronze braziers to a pile of rotten wood heaped where the Big House used to stand. "She should be here."

"Who?"

"The Oracle of Delphi."

Clio frowns. "Is that a god?"

"She prophesizes," says Percy. "And she can't be far from here…" He starts shifting the broken beams, rummaging carefully through the charred furniture crumbled walls. Clio follows his lead, though more slowly and with an air of impatient confusion, until she cries out, startled, and Percy knows that they've found her.

"It's a mummy," she hisses.

"It's the Oracle," says Percy. He shifts the debris off the black, mangled hulk revealing the tatters of a tie-dyed sundress and more twisted flesh. Clio makes a petrified gagging noise behind him, but when Percy is done clearing the area around the wizened body, he reaches out a hand to her, and her hand creakingly takes it. "Uh, Miss Oracle, this is Clio. She's here on a quest."

A trickle of green vapor rises from the mummy's mouth, and the Oracle begins to speak.

_A cold hearth and twelve broken thrones,  
Watch over a planet filled with bones.  
The gods alone cannot reclaim  
The world ruled in the Time Lord's name,  
Their powers gone across the seas  
Lost with their forgotten stories.  
And those who try to change their fates,  
Will find that only death awaits._

"Wow," says Clio finally. "Are all prophecies that bad?"

*

Percy leaves Clio to sleep in Hera's cabin – perhaps because it's used to neglect, it's the cabin in the best shape after two hundred years of an empty camp – and walks to the moonlit sea. First he takes in the fresh tang of the salt air and the sound of the restless waves, then the wet sand at the edge of the water, then the little wavelets that cling to his ankles. He tosses his thin clothes and his borrowed sword to the empty beach and lets the tide wrap around him and carry him out and away from the ruined mainland, where the sea brushes away his salty tears and hugs him close and warm.

 _Welcome home_ , burble the fish and the mollusks and the littlest microbes.  _Welcome home, welcome home._

"It's good to be home," he sighs, and means it, because out in the deeps he can give in to the soft caresses of the currents and almost forget that the Titans have crushed the West. "But I have to…"

 _To go,_  agree the fish and the mollusks and the littlest microbes.  _To bring back the sea god. But for tonight, rest here._

*

The tide carries Percy back to the shore just before dawn. He's just finished pulling his shirt over his head when the air  _pops_  behind him and a familiar pair of tanned arms drape over his shoulders. "Having fun?" Luke murmurs.

Percy pushes away and goes for his sword, but Luke holds up his hands in a show of peacefulness. Percy picks up the sword anyway. "What do you want?"

"To know how Clio is doing," says Luke. "I've been too busy with the monsters following you to get close."

"We took care of our own monsters," Percy scowls.

"You took care of some of your own monsters," corrects Luke. "I took down the ones who tried to follow you across the expressway and into camp. I  _did_  see that you excavated the Oracle. Did she have anything to say?"

"Going to pass it on to Kronos?"

Luke scowls. "If I didn't want her to succeed," he says slowly, angrily, "I would have let the dragons get her in the Lincoln Tunnel and left you up there. I would have let the  _empousai_  get into Hera's cabin. I would have told Orthys someone had set you free and let Atlas throw you into Tartarus. But I didn't."

"Still not telling."

Luke bends over, pulling something out of his high boots. It's celestial bronze, short but sharp and still fierce looking.

Percy's breath catches in his throat. "That's Annabeth's…"

"You chose not to trust me before," he says bitterly. "The choice that razed Olympus, remember?"

He grits his teeth. "I do."

"And now I'm the only one in the world who'll help you. Make the right choice this time."

Percy regards him furiously, warily. "Swear on the River Styx," he says finally, "that you won't tell anyone or anything. No Titans, no monsters, no mortals, no spirits, no – nothing."

"I swear."

And so Percy recites the prophecy – all of it, not faking the end like he and Annabeth used to, when there was an uncomfortable ending. When he's finished, Luke looks back towards the camp for a long moment, and says:

"It may not be as bad as it sounds."

"'Their powers gone' and 'lost with their forgotten stories' sounds pretty bad. And Clio's not big on 'certain death awaits'."

Luke shakes his head. "It's bad on its own, but it doesn't say that their powers are actually  _gone_  - they haven't disappeared. They're just lost."

"Lost anywhere in the world. Clio can't search the  _whole world_."

"She won't have to," says Luke. "Because they're lost  _with their forgotten stories_. Listen. There's a hill on the island of Delos where a whole flock of quails live. At the top of the hill, there's a tree, and strung up in its branches are a silver bow and a quiver of arrows."

"The symbols of Artemis," Percy frowns. "How did you find them?"

Luke swallows, and looks pointedly away from the water. "I told you," he says. "I searched the seas there for a long time."

They both shift uncomfortably, both still visibly angry, until Percy manages to say, "So you found Artemis's symbol of power. How does that help?"

"Percy," says Luke. "You are really, spectacularly dense. The  _gods alone_  can't fight the Titans because they don't have their powers. Their powers – their  _symbols of power_  – are across the seas  _with their stories_. The myth of Artemis and Apollo's birth says that they were born on Delos."

"You can't expect me to remember where all the gods were born," he protests.

"That's why they're forgotten stories," says Luke archly. "Why would restoring the Olympians be  _easy_?"

"Not easy," frowns Percy, "but maybe… something we can do now. If the rest of the gods' symbols of power are hidden to the places sacred to them, it's not impossible for her to find them."

"With your help." Luke looks up at the rising sun and sighs. "Clio will be waking up soon. Take her to Greece; I'll go back to the city and see if there's anything useful stashed away in the old libraries."

"I hope the monsters haven't checked out all the copies of  _The Odyssey._ "

Luke laughs and caresses Percy's cheek before Percy can pull away. "The end of civilization does have its little advantages," he smiles. "I'll find out as much as I can and meet you in Greece. Take care of Clio, Percy."

He pockets Annabeth's dagger, pulls his sword from its sheath, and vanishes with a slash of air.


	2. The Oldest Flame

**ii. the oldest flame**

 

.

 

" _Prometheus went up to Olympus, took a glowing ember from the sacred hearth, and hid it in a hollow stalk of fennel. He carried it down to earth, gave it to mankind, and told them never to let the light from Olympus die out…_ " (Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire)

 

.

 

Percy scavenges a scuttled plastic canoe from the bottom of the lake. Here and there are strings of fresh-water pearls that naiads used to wear, but the naiads, it seems, have abandoned the place. He can't blame them.

"We're going to take this to  _Greece_?" groans Clio, helping him carry it to the shore. "The only place this thing is going is the bottom of the ocean."

"I'm the son of Poseidon," he says. It feels strange to say so, but he presses on. "I could get you to Greece on a plank of wood, but this will be a little more comfortable."

She makes an indeterminate noise. "Never seen Poseidon powers before," she said. "Plant powers, death powers, war powers, love powers, sky powers, but never any water powers."

 _Because there was no way for Nico to get to me_ , he thinks, but doesn't say it. "Whose daughter are you?"

"Phaedra and Dictys."

"I mean, whose  _divine_  daughter? Or great-granddaughter."

She shrugs under the canoe. "Most of them, probably. Not counting the virgins. No one kept track that well." They reach the shore and set the canoe down. Clio stares across the big blue expanse and her stomach growls audibly. "So are we fishing our way through this odyssey or what?"

Percy smiles, and sets down the backpack he found in Hermes cabin. He shows her the thermoses, the squished mess of plastic baggies, and the little bottle of vitamins.

"Expiration date, 2107," she reads. "Nice find."

"They'll still be good," he promises. "And the rest… well, have you ever tried ambrosia?"

  
.

 

With Percy calling the tides to them, it takes six days to cross the ocean to Greece, and they're the best six days Percy has had in  _years_ . Sometimes he jumps out of the canoe and swims alongside it, letting the fish nibble his toes and racing the dolphins and hippocampi over the waves. He convinces one hippocampi to let Clio ride her for a ways, pulling her over the sea with the ocean air ruffling her short brown hair.

"They're amazing," she laughs, as her ride helps her back into the canoe. "I'd never even heard of them, but they're  _beautiful._ "

"If you like them," says Percy, "you've got to see a pegasus."

And when Percy isn't swimming and Clio isn't sleeping, he tells her stories. He's pretty sure he's getting some of them wrong, but she barely knows  _any_  of them. When he runs out of myths, he shares movies and television shows and comic books, and basic things about the world that was. Policemen eating donuts. The unnamable vegetables in Chinatown. Christmas trees. Final exams. Blue birthday cake.

"And we'll get all that back if we save the gods?" she asks, as they watch the sunset and he tells her about the lunar landing, and how miffed Artemis had been that the mission had been named after her brother.

"Well," he says, "it will be a start."

  
.

 

True to his word, Luke appears on the shore beside them the night they reach Greece. Clio is asleep, but Percy is sitting in the surf as the low tide bounces playfully at his waist. "Come to the dunes," he says, running his fingers through Percy's hair. "I can't spread maps out down here."

Percy bats Luke's hand away but follows him past Clio's sleeping form to the little grassy hills. Luke has a small sheaf of papers and a few maps that look torn out of an atlas; covered in circles and names. Mount Ida for Zeus. Nysa for Hades. Rhodes for Poseidon. Argos for Hera. Eleusis for Demeter. Delphi for Apollo and Delos for Artemis. Sparta for Ares. Mount Etna for Hephaestus and Cyprus for Aphrodite. Pheneos for Hermes. Delos again, on the second of the two hills, for Dionysus.

"Wow," says Percy, really glad that someone else has done the research for him. "And Hestia?"

Luke waves a hand. "Who cares about Hestia? She couldn't lift a finger against Kronos."

"I do," Percy frowns. "Everything Clio wants – I mean, getting a hearth and home back is a big part of it."

He leans back on the dunes, stargazing. "She doesn't have a sacred site, or a symbol of power. Her power is just everywhere there's a flame." He clicks his fingers and an old lighter appears in his hand. When he flicks it on, the shadows on his face make him look even older than the two-hundred-something years he is. "Here's your first symbol of power."

"Great. The ancient and mystic power of a Zippo."

Luke lobs it over, and Percy pockets it with a grumble. "Read up on Prometheus and Epimetheus when you're back in New York. The fire Prometheus gave to man was stolen from the hearth of Olympus. Any fire down here is supposed to be a product of that first fire."

"But it's not really special. It' just – um – a simile."

"A metaphor," Luke corrects. "A symbol. Like a  _symbol of power_."

He blinks. "Oh."

"One down, twelve to go."

Percy pockets the lighter; it something better comes up, he'll take it, but for now it's the best lead on Hestia they have, and it makes sense, sort of. The lighter, that is. The rest of it… "Why are you helping so much?"

"Maybe I like watching you do the hero thing again. It's fun when you're not ruining my great plans for a new world order."

Luke reaches out a hand to Percy, but he recoils, still uncomfortable with the way Luke's obsession with reclaiming the old West has been transposed squarely onto  _him_. "Don't joke about it."

"Fine," says Luke, sitting up again. "Why are  _you_  helping her so much?"

Percy scowls. "I'm fixing a mistake."

He spreads his hands. "And so am I.

  
.

 

"Okay," admits Clio, "maybe this prophecy won't be too rough."

They're standing at the top of the first hill on the little island of Delos, in the shade of an old tree. Gleaming in the highest branches is a hint of something metallic – if it were still the 1990s, Percy would have thought it was an old CD strung up to keep bugs off tomatoes, except he's pretty sure no one put their internet company junk discs at the top of three-story trees.

"Depressing, but accurate," Percy agrees.

Clio squints up at the bow and arrows tied in the high branches. "You want to grab it?"

Percy shakes his head. "immortals can't take each others' symbols of power," he frowns. "Besides, Artemis doesn't really like guys."

"The gods have  _so_  many weird rules," she complains, but pulls off her backpack and rummages around it until she pulls out something that looks like the clipping from some sort of vine. "Rope ivy," she explains, noticing his bemused look. "Grow it up and tie it off over whatever you want to climb, and you've got an easy lift anywhere you need." She leans against the tree, reaching up with the vine –

And the tiny island rumbles.

Both of them have their swords out in a flash, scanning the area. Something dark is rushing out of the sea towards them, faster than anything  _should_  be able to rush.

"Is that a… pig?" Clio frowns.

Percy realizes what it is it is a second later. "The Calydonian Boar."

"The wha–"

"I'll tell you the story later, just  _climb_!"

She stuffs Riptide back in her pocket and starts scrambling up the big old tree without another word. Percy hefts his unfamiliar sword and stands between the boar and the tree, waiting for it to crash against him – but it changes course at the last instant, leaving Percy slashing at thin air while the boar swerves around him and runs  _straight into the tree._

The old thing's trunk groans audibly, and the boar's impact sends a flurry of green leaves raining to the grass. Clio screams, but when Percy looks up, she's still gripping her homegrown rope in her gloved hands.

"Keep going!" shouts Percy, chasing after the boar, but it doesn't seem to care about him at all. It avoids his sword, yes, but it never turns to face him. It's just fixated on the tree and – "It's guarding the bow!"

"It's -  _aaaaugh!_ " The boar impacts against the tree again, and she slides down her rope, smacking into a branch below.

"It's one of Artemis's monsters," calls Percy. He manages to intercept the boar in its next charge, but it doesn't even slow down when the celestial bronze slices a shallow gash across its back. "It doesn't want you to get the bow!"

"Then maybe we should just – back off…!"

"You can't!" Percy dives after the boar again, trying to herd it downhill, but the monster won't be deterred, and the huge thing is  _faster_  than Percy can make himself move. "We need their symbols of power!"

That's when the boar hits the tree harder than ever, splitting the air – and presumably some of the tree – with a massive  _crack_. The impact makes Clio lose her grip; she starts tumbling down, where the boar is foaming eagerly.

" _No!_ " Percy points his sword at Clio, and a wave of saltwater rushes to catch her, propelling her somewhere into the highest branches and out of sight. The water seems to get the boar's attention for the first time; it turns its back on Clio and the tree and lowers its tusks, rushing for Percy –

And then a silver arrow sprouts in its back, and it disappears.

Percy's brain doesn't really register what just happened at first. He stands there, ready to chop a boar's head off, but the boar isn't there. In its place is a shaft of pure silver, fletched with something that shifts like moonlight.

"Wow," says Clio, and Percy's fairly certain that it's not just the distance that's making her sound faint. "Uh. So much for 'not too rough'." She rappels carefully down the tree, the symbols of Artemis strapped to her back and glowing faintly, even in the afternoon sun. Up close, Percy can see that the bow's curve is almost a perfect crescent moon, long and slender and covered in old magic symbols. "Any more monsters running up here?" When Percy shakes his head, she collapses against the tree trunk, flushed and wide-eyed. "I have  _no idea_  what just happened."

"It must have kept people away from the bow," offers Percy, flopping next to her. "So no random travelers grabbed it."

"I thought you said Artemis didn't like guys," she groans. "Why couldn't it have run into  _you_  a few times?"

He thinks it over and says, finally, "It must have known I couldn't take the bow. I don't think it even realized I was helping you until the water caught you."

"Shout 'I'm with Clio' on the next one," she grumbles.

"Up for the next one already?"

" _Haha._ " She unstraps the bow and quiver and lays them across her lap; they shimmer and shrink into a small hairclip, which she holds up with a grin. "I just recovered a  _goddess's weapon_. Don't I get the rest of the day off?"

He smiles. "I think we can fit a break in."

  
.

 

They cross the small island to search for Dionysus's symbol of power the next day, and spend hours trying to figure out what they're even  _looking_  for until Clio finds a golden vine hidden in a bramble. Percy spends the rest of that evening chasing her around Delos, trying to stop her from chirping like a dolphin, drinking out of ominous-looking fountains, and generally going crazy. He only manages calm her down when he dunks her underwater; she comes up spluttering, and lets one last dolphin-noise, but when she steps out of his fresh-made tidal pool, there's a slender golden bracelet wrapped around her arm, embellished with little shimmering grape leaves.

"Sorry," Percy says, a little sheepishly. "I forgot about the madness part."

"Lucky you," she says, still hacking up a bit of saltwater. "I don't think I'll ever be able to."

Most of the rest of the gods' symbols are equally well-guarded. The two of them battle a few legions of zombies at Nysa and a horde of dead warriors at Sparta and the world's hungriest Venus fly-traps at Eleusis – though both battles turn into a game of Percy plowing down as many enemies as possible while the forces of dead angry godliness chase after Clio. Still, Clio is one of the toughest demigods Percy has ever met, and with every symbol of power they recover, she becomes even  _more_  powerful. She uses Hades's Helm of Terror (which, on her, strangely, becomes a floppy knitted cap) to sneak around the ghost of the Python at Delphi and shoot the shade with a solid volley of Apollo's arrows before it even realizes she was there, and kills a sea serpent the size of a subway train off the coast of Rhodes.

"I don't think it likes me much," she says, when she picks up Poseidon's trident.

"What?" he frowns.

"I mean, it just  _doesn't like me_. The rest of them adjusted for me, but this won't  _budge._ "

It's true. Both Artemis and Apollo's bows are the perfect size for her, and have shrunk down to curved hairpins that glitter in her dark hair. Ares's giant sword reduced itself to a much more manageable one-and-a-half hander that hangs, feather-light, at her waist, while Dionysus's grape-vine bracelet, Demeter's wheat-charm necklace, and the Floppy Knitted Thing of Terror look perfectly inconspicuous until she calls them into use against their monster of the week. But Poseidon's trident remains stubbornly… a trident. "Maybe it needs to get used to you."

"I don't think so," she says. "I think… it doesn't want me to have it."

"Uh."

"I mean, it's a god's symbol of power, right? It can probably pick up stuff like 'hey you, you're not one of Poseidon's kids'."

"Wait." He blinks. "You want  _me_  to have it?"

"Sure," she says, "I mean, you're the son of the sea god, right? You're probably the best candidate to swing his trident around."

"But this is your quest," he protests, "and you beat the serpent for it."

She holds it out, looking determined. "And now I'm giving it to you. That's not against the rules, right?"

"I…" He takes it from her slowly; in his hands, it glows an even brighter green, and shrinks to a more comfortable height for Percy to wield. "I guess not."

  
.

 

And so he keeps the trident and the lighter. It's not the same as Riptide, but using it comes naturally enough to him, and his control over the seas and waters becomes stronger than ever.

"You move too fast with that thing," grumbles Luke, appearing the next night while Clio is asleep and Percy is listening to the waves.

"That's a good thing," he points out. "We'll get the symbols of power back faster."

"I know," says Luke, sighing. "And that's for the best. Prometheus has a sense that something is coming."

Percy sits up bolt upright. "He  _what_?"

"He's just picking up that the demigods are about to do something. He doesn't suspect that you're gone, so he's complaining to Kronos that there's probably a bunch of them wandering around the Midwest planning a campaign against Orthys."

"What did you tell him?"

"I didn't tell him  _anything_. I swore on the Styx."

Percy says something impolite.

"Percy," glares Luke, "as nice as it is that you're recovering the symbols of power this fast, you need to  _trust me_."

"Not going to happen," he glowers.

"We'll see."

And he leaves.

  
.

 

That morning, Percy and Clio go after the girdle of Aphrodite, which turns out to be defended by a gaggle of beautiful, apparently-invulnerable men who try to distract Clio from the gem-wrought belt by stripping and mobbing her. Their only weakness turns out to be a jab with the arrows of Artemis.

"Really," grumbles Clio, buckling on the girdle, which adjusts itself for her to do double-duty as an elaborately bejeweled sword-belt, "what kind of protection is shirtless men?"

"They almost stopped you," Percy notes. Clio blushes, which Percy thinks is the most beautiful thing he's seen until he realizes what she just put on. "Could you, um, make that not work?"

"What?"

" _Love magic._ "

She goes redder than ever, but she squeezes her eyes in concentration, and when she opens them again, she just looks really red instead of like the most stunning woman in the world. Percy sighs with relief.

  
.

 

Hephaestus's challenge is less embarrassing – there's a dozen automatons patrolling the mountain, which Clio ends up hotwiring rather than fighting, so they take a sort of drilling submarine down to the jewel-studded cavern where the god's hammer waits.

"I don't actually know how to fight with a hammer," frowns Clio, but no sooner are the words out of her mouth then the hammer  _poofs_  into a ruby-fronted approximation of a Swiss army knife, bristling with miniature versions of every tool Percy has ever seen and some he's never even  _imagined_.

"It's perfect!" gasps Clio, flipping a full-sized power drill out of her newest symbol of power. Percy would have said "bizarre," but in this case he defers to the several-generations-removed daughter of Hephaestus and nods agreeably as she clips it to her belt.

  
.

 

Recovering Hermes's caduceus proves to be quite simple. It comes to life – quite literally – as soon as Clio picks it up, and George and Martha blink their reptilian eyes in Percy's direction.

_Is that Percy Jackson?_

_George, don't forget about the girl-_

_Did you bring me a rat?_

Clio fumbles and almost drops the caduceus to the floor, and looks at Percy disbelievingly.

_Of course he hasn't got a rat._

_But we've been starving in here for centuries!_

"They're George and Martha," grins Percy. "Say hello to Clio, George and Martha."

 _Hello to Clio, George and Martha,_  echoes George.

 _Not that again!_  says Martha, chasing him around the caduceus.

"Hello, George and Martha," says Clio tentatively. "Um, are there any monsters waiting for us?"

 _Oh, yes,_  slithers George.

 _There were_ , Martha corrects.  _But since you're with him, Hermes probably doesn't want you enslaved in a Monster Donut for a hundred years._

"Thanks," says Clio, giving Percy a you'd-better-explain-that-later look. "So you don't mind coming with me?"

 _We'd be glad to,_  rustles Martha,  _child of the gods._

 _Yes,_  adds George,  _if you give us rats._

And indeed, after Percy and Clio hunt down a few rats, George and Martha twine placidly around the caduceus, which shrinks to the size of a smartphone on a clip and fits snuggly onto the girdle of Aphrodite with Clio's other prizes.

  
.

 

Much to Percy's surprise, taking Hera's symbol of power is just as easy. Outside a cave nestled between pastures of cows is a sleeping man – at least, a sort-of sleeping man. Half his hundred eyes are closed, and half of them are open, which makes  _all_  of Percy's eyes blink in surprised recognition. "Argus?"

The fifty closed eyes open wide, and Argus gives Percy a winking thumbs up.

"Hey," Percy waves back, a little feebly.

"You know him?" squeaks Clio.

"Argus was the security guard at Camp Half-Blood," Percy explains. "And he works for – you're still working for Hera, right?"

Argus nods.

"This is Clio," says Percy, by way of belated introduction. "She's a demigod."

The ensuing  _duh_  look from Argus is pretty epic. Percy thinks it's the hundred eyes.

"And she's reclaiming the gods' symbols of power."

Argus shrugs.

"I know Hera isn't big on Zeus's kids," says Percy, "but we're trying to break her out of Tartarus. That's a good reason to let Clio borrow her symbol, right?"

Argus considers, narrowing his many eyes, then nods and steps aside.

"Thanks," says Percy, as Clio walks into the cave. "And, uh, good to see you again."

The hundred eyes roll. Even if Argus doesn't talk, Percy knows he's heard enough sight-jokes to last  _another_  four thousand years.

Clio manages to wake up the sleeping peacock in the cave, which runs around for a bit until Clio can tackle it, at which point it gives up a resigned sigh and puffs into an braided ribbon of blue and green and purple feathers that curls around Clio's ankle.

"What does it do?" asks Clio, looking from Percy to Argus.

Argus shrugs. Percy ventures, "Makes you get married?"

When neither of them can figure it out, they say their goodbyes to Argus and set off for Mount Ida.

  
.

 

The mountain is blanketed in near-black clouds; from the sea, they make the landscape look like a poorly done watercolor, too dark for the clear blue sky that surrounds them in all directions.

"Like Olympus," Clio frowns. "A really depressing Olympus."

"Being thrown into Tartarus is pretty depressing," Percy points out.

Both of them are anticipating danger, but instead they find a gaggle of nymphs, who stand a bow when Percy and Clio walk into their clearing.

"Hi guys?" Clio offers tentatively. "Uh, are you going to turn into monsters?"

Percy kicks her unsubtlely. "They're the nymphs who raised Zeus," he hisses.

"Oh!" Clio looks stricken. "I – I'm sorry. I'm Clio, and I'm Zeus's lots-of-greats granddaughter and we're…"

"Here for the Master Bolt," says one of the nymphs, smiling. "Yes, we're quite aware."

"You are?" asks Clio suspiciously.

Another nymph nods. "The gods rose to fight the Titans before," she offers, "we expected one of mighty Zeus's descendents to come for the Master Bolt in time."

"Sure took you long enough," mutters a third.

The first nymph gives the complainer a stern glance. "Just for that,  _you_  can go get the Bolt."

"But—"

" _Now._ " The whining nymph flounces off, leaving the first (and the rest, but they seem less interested in talking, thinks Percy) gazing at Clio. "Still, there is one symbol of power you have yet to reclaim."

"Aegis," nods Clio. "I know, we'll get it next—"

"Why have you waited?" asks the nymph. This time, she's looking directly at Percy.

"Athena never really liked me," says Percy, which is true but not the truth.

"Son of Poseidon," she says sternly, "you cannot avoid that knowledge for much longer."

"I know," he says, a lump in his throat, and blissfully, the nymph turns her attention back to Clio.

  
.

 

"What can't you avoid?" asks Clio, as they climb the steps to the Parthenon.

"Nothing."

She stops dead in her tracks, blocking his way up the narrow road. "You're lying."

"Nothing I want to talk about."

"Why doesn't Athena like you?"

"It doesn't matter anymore."

"Unless we get attacked by killer owls in the Parthen—"

"Clio." He feels bad about cutting her off, but this is one subject he  _doesn't_  feel like talking about with her. "It'll be okay."

And it is – recovering Aegis is, anyway. It takes the better part of the day – a day filled with awkward silences and a feeling of lingering unhappiness – but eventually Clio spots a pattern in the old marble. Percy moves blocks of stone at her direction to "solve" the puzzle until the moon is high in the sky, but when he's finally rearranged the ruins to her liking, a round shield shimmers into being above the entrance to the temple, adorned with a familiar head cast in bronze.

"Like the Shield of Thalia," gasps Clio.

"Not exactly," says Percy, as she uses Dionysus's vine to unhook Aegis from its lofty perch. "Thalia's was a model of this one."

"You knew Thalia Grace?" frowns Clio, distracted from the glory of retrieving the final item of power.

"She was a few years older than I was."

"And Nico di Angelo?"

"Sure, we met when he was ten—"

"Then you must have fought in the last battle! What was it like? How many monsters were there? How were you captured?"

His heart is beating too fast, and his hands are shaking. "I can't talk about it," he says.

"But—"

"Clio!"

"— oh. It must have been pretty traumatic."

"It's just…"

" _Or_  it's the thing you're avoiding."

"Which I said I  _don't want to talk about_."

She studies him intently, and maybe it's the setting, but right then she has the Athena-look, sizing him up. "Fine," she says at last, strapping Aegis to her arm and not even registering her old amazement as the shield snaps down to the size of a large wrist-bangle and clamps onto her wrist. "Then I'm going to bed. We've got a long trip back to the States tomorrow."

  
.

 

"Walk with me," says Luke, appearing on a chunk of marble.

"Clio's sleeping."

Luke draws Annabeth's dagger and paints a complicated looking symbol in the air. Every stroke calls up a glowing sigil from the old pillars of the Parthenon, until the whole place is bathed in dim blue light light. "She'll be safe." And so Percy goes.

"Walk" turns out to be "run." At first, Percy wants to protest that Luke is going too fast, but then he realizes his immortal body keeps up easily, dashing at superhuman speeds and leaping broken old fences with barely any effort. The rush of the wind in his hair and against his skin is exhilarating; he realizes that this is the first time he's really pressed this changed body to its limits on Earth. It's a strange feeling, but not an  _entirely_  uncomfortable one.

So they lope across the countryside. When Percy asks where they're going, Luke says they're following the way where the Long Wall once stood, down to the old harbor, but won't say anything more until the clean, tangy smell of the sea hits Percy and the air cools all around them. They slow, just a little, through a cluster of ruins that must once have been a town, until they come to a half-standing house so close to the sea that Percy feels the pull of the tides. It's a lonely little building, sitting wearily against the starry sky, and it's that thought that helps Percy realize where they are.

"This is where you brought her."

Luke nods.

"This is where she died."

His face is hard. "That's not how it was supposed to happen. I promised her."

"But it happened anyway."

He wheels on Percy, his blond hair almost silver-gray in the moonlight. "Because of  _you_. If you'd given me her dagger in the throne room – if she hadn't kept  _pining_  after you–"

Percy punches him in the face, hard, which doesn't hurt either of them because both of them still bear the curse of Achilles and they're both immortal, but it does send Luke sprawling into the coarse grasses that grow on the dunes, and at least that gives Percy a tiny flicker of satisfaction. "Then maybe you shouldn't have joined up with the let's-wreck-civilization Titans in the first place!"

Slowly, Luke stands. "I told you before," he says coldly, "this world isn't what I wanted. I haven't wanted it since she died."

"It's a little late to say 'oops, my bad'!"

Luke flashes that half-cocky, half-deranged smile. "I heard you talking to Clio. It's what  _you're_  doing.  _Oops, my bad, I didn't mean to help Kronos win._ " Percy tries to hit him again, but Luke catches his swinging fist and pins Percy against the rough sand.

"Don't even think about it," Percy grits, and the waves rage against the sand.

"I know where not to pick a fight," he says, letting Percy up. "I only wanted you to see this place."

"To mess with me."

"So you'd know exactly why I'm fighting Kronos now. No one questions why  _you're_  trying to save the Olympians, but at least one of you has to understand why I am."

"Then you should have sweet-talked Clio."

Luke looks out to the choppy waters. "Clio wouldn't understand. You're the only one who remembers the old world  _or_  her."

The sea flares up again. "You don't even deserve to  _talk_  about Annabeth."

Luke steps back, eyes flinty. "Maybe not. But I've done what I came here to do. I'm not going to stand around waiting for you to get mad and dump me in the Aegean."

Percy springs up. "Don't run away, you–"

But he disappears, leaving Percy alone with the broken old house and the drum of the surf.

  
.

 

After lingering in the ruins, he calls the sea over the sand and the grass and the tangled weeds of the overgrown garden. He calls it in through the broken windows and the door and the cracks in the walls. He calls it and the water rushes in, through every hole in the little house, and as it pours in, it erodes the windows and the door and the walls, tearing away bits of wood and stucco. And then it pounds the little house with stormy intensity, until the weakened building creaks and groans and bows before him with an unsatisfying thump of masonry.

When it collapses, he lets the sea slide back down the hill, leaving behind a pile of rubble, and he lets the sea carry him with it, too, down to the beach with the pale, fine sand. He stands there facing west, at the shifting line where the ocean meets the shore, and tries to follow her into the surf, but even the fiercest currents won't carry him to the Underworld. And so, in the moonlit depths, he calls out to her, weary and heartsick.

_Annabeth._

They come from miles and miles to listen to him: the largest and smallest creatures of the sea, the newborn and the wizened. But they can only question,  _Annabeth? Annabeth? What's an Annabeth?_

They are all very young, and he feels so very, very old.


	3. Ignite the Stars

**iii. ignite the stars**

 

“ _The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back…. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars._ ” – Matthew Stover

 

“He was here again, wasn’t he?”

It’s early morning; the sun is streaming over the hills and Clio is running her fingers through her hair in a _civilization-ended-and-we-no-longer-have-hairbrushes_ way. “He who?” he asks, and hopes it sounds convincing.

“Scar. Luke. Whichever.” She sits down next to him, chin in hands. “You can’t really lie about it, you know. He leaves stuff behind when he travels like that.”

“ ‘Stuff’?”

“It’s a Hermes thing. We can tell when demigods have wandered in and out. And…” Clio takes a deep breath. “You look stressed.”

“This is a pretty stressful quest,” he bluffs, but he’s never been great at that.

“But more stressful when he’s been around. And I mean – it’s not like I’m prying or stalking or anything! But it’s sort of… obvious.” When she moves her hands, he catches sight of himself in Aegis’s rim, just for a flash, but it’s enough time to know that she’s spot-on. He looks as bad as he feels. 

“He wanted to talk.” His throat feels stupidly constricted.

“Anything new?” she asks, because when Luke comes with tidbits like _I looked in this book and you should be getting into the heart of that mountain_ and _Prometheus is guessing things_ , he usually passes the message on to her. 

“Old. About someone who used to live here.”

“He must have been someone important.”

“She,” he corrects, and then, “She was.”

“A demigod?”

“Athena’s.”

“What was she like?”

“She was the first demigod I met,” he starts, and it all tumbles out from there; Clio doesn’t stop him. He hasn’t told Clio about any of this before – of all the stories he’s told, he’s never told his, or hers. Theirs. But now he tells her about her first words to him. He remembers them like they were yesterday, and the sight of her sprinting across the hills at Camp Half-Blood. _I want you on my team for Capture the Flag._ Learning about their world from her. Questing with her. _No love magic for you._ Obedience training with Cerberus. A promise to stop Kronos even if the gods wouldn’t. That summer at sea in the Bermuda Triangle. How _smart_ she was about taking on Polyphemus. The too-long quest to save her from Mount Orthys. Aphrodite in the desert. Her face in the Labyrinth, certain and then uncertain and then just determined. Her lips on his. Her face when she saw Luke rising as Kronos for the first time.

It hurts, but he keeps going.

Her in armor, going with him to the rivers.

Her fighting next to him, deflecting that one deadly blow.

Her fingers brushing over his mortal point, the shock and the spark and the only time it didn’t _hurt_.

The elevator to the top of Olympus. 

And her voice, cutting through the fight…

_Promise._

He chokes on the word, and can’t keep going. Because this is the worst part, and after that come two hundred years of dreams, and so many of them were about her. Things that happened, like the kiss at Mount St. Helens. Things that never happened, like the dream about Saint Patrick’s Day and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man battle. Things that never had a chance to happen, like going to college and renting a place in the city and a little boy with gray eyes.

And, too often, wisdom facing westward at the edge of the sea, falling into the waves. 

His throat is tight and his nose is stupidly runny and his eyes only water for a minute before he cries like he’s five instead of two-hundred and whatever. Clio looks panicked, and pulls off her glove, and tries to dry his eyes with it, and throws her arms around him and apologizes again and again for asking and for the _longest time_ Percy tries to say, but can’t get out, that the stupid nymphs on Mount Ida were right, and:

“And I still haven’t told you what went wrong.”

With her arms tight around him, he can feel her whole body stiffen. She’s told him what she knows about the Battle for Olympus, so he knows that Thalia and Nico were never able to share this part, that no one but Percy and Luke and Kronos and Hestia have known for two hundred years. But she needs to know, because Luke is _right_ , because everyone assumes that Percy is the big damn hero of New York, but he’s not, and thinking that he _is_ is really, really dangerous. 

The end of the world is pretty much proof of that. 

“It’s not like Thalia and Nico lied about it,” he says finally, “they just weren’t there. They didn’t know we got a chance to win. She got Luke to take control of his body again, because he remembered that promise, even if Kronos didn’t. He said that if I gave him her knife, he’d hold off Kronos long enough to wound his own mortal point.”

Her eyes widen. “And he lied?”

“No,” Percy says. “I never gave him the chance. Kronos left Luke’s body in his true form a few minutes later. You can see what happened after that.”

“Percy…”

“There was this prophecy that said I’d make a choice that would save or destroy Olympus. And I made the wrong choice.”

Clio bites her lip for a minute, then says, slowly, “So you think it’s your fault that the Titans won the battle of New York.”

“We had a chance to win.”

“I know,” she says, sounding strained, like she’s grasping for all Athena’s wisdom to get the right words out, “but even if you messed up, it’s not like you _wanted_ the Titans to win. It’s not like you marched an army on the city. So… Percy, it doesn’t matter if you made the wrong choice a couple hundred years ago. I mean, not to me, anyway. You’re still the hero I need on this quest.” She pulls back and gives him a lop-sided little smile. “Come on, if it wasn’t for you, I’d still be hacking at hydras in that city.”

“If it weren’t for me, there wouldn’t _be_ hydras in New York City,” he points out. “At least, not as many.”

She rolls her eyes. “No way. Thalia told all sorts of stories about that battle. If it weren’t for you, there wouldn’t have even been a battle – just a bunch of monsters taking over! You know more about the gods and fighting Titans than _anyone_. So… think of it as a second chance, I guess. This time, we’ll make all the right choices and fix the world.”

“You’re pretty confident,” he notes.

“I’ve got eleven symbols of power,” she says, smiling a little. “I’m allowed to be confident.” Clio stands, and holds out a hand to him. “Besides, things have been going so _well_ since I met you. Before, it was just ‘fight a monster, hope no one died,’ but now I’m doing something none of us even _dreamed_ of, and it’s going great.”

He looks at her, and finally, takes her gloved hand. “Maybe,” he says, “but you’re not going to like the next step.”

*

Poseidon’s trident cuts the trip back to the States in half, but that’s still three days of ocean travel in a canoe that’s seen better days (not to mention centuries). This is not a trip of wistful reminiscence, but of planning. The gods, they know, are in Tartarus, which requires a trip down to the Underworld to bust them out of the deepest, darkest pit ever created. As far as Percy knows, there’s still only two entrances – the main way through L.A., and the little entrance in Central Park.

“Heading that far west is a bad idea,” Clio says. “The whole coast is a big monster nest, from Vancouver to Baja. And do you _really_ want to sail through the big ditch?”

“The Panama Canal?”

“Yeah. That.”

So they choose New York, riding through the quiet harbor and abandoning their empty canoe next to the _Intrepid_. Clio picks up a sporty little car a few blocks away, and has them roaring through the city streets in no time. It looks exactly the same as Percy remembers it – overgrown, quiet, and terribly empty. 

“Where now?” Clio asks, parking haphazardly in the middle of Central Park. 

“We’re looking for – rocks.”

“There are rocks all over the place,” Clio protests, gesturing around at the park, which is as much of a rubble-strewn war zone as it was when Camp Half-Blood took on Hyperion here. 

“Try to concentrate,” he tells her. “It’s an entrance to the Underworld. You should be able to – I don’t know. To granddaughter-of-Hades it out.”

“Or you could ask.” Both of them spin around, to see Luke perched on an odd pile of large boulders. “Hello again.”

Percy’s whole body tenses up, but it’s Clio who responds. “You!”

“Me. You’re looking good, Clio. I haven’t seen anyone that well-accessorized since _The Dark Knight_.”

She blushes beneath her symbols of power, but forges on. “What are you doing here?”

“Helping some more. Being traditional. It was Hermes’s job to lead the dead to the Underworld, you know…” But as soon as the god’s name drops from his lips, the smartphone at Clio’s waist goes berserk, and it takes her a few fumbles to catch the full-sized caduceus, complete with angry, writhing snakes.

 _We’ll handle it,_ hisses Martha.

 _Without “jump off a bridge, land on Charon’s ferry” shortcuts,_ adds George, his forked tongue flicking angrily at Luke. 

“George,” says Luke, arching an eyebrow, “Martha. Good to see you again.”

_No it isn’t._

Clio looks from caduceus to Luke to Percy. “Can we do it without him?”

He considers it. “They’d know an entrance to the Underworld,” he ventures, “but we already have one of those. And the gods the gods aren’t supposed to trespass in each others’ domains, so Hermes probably never explored much of the Underworld.”

 _It’s true_ , slithers George sadly. _We only ever went to the creepy palace, dropping messages off…_

_Hush!_

“And they haven’t been in two hundred years,” interjects Luke smoothly. “I have. _And_ I’ve been to Tartarus.”

“Why?” Percy asks suspiciously. 

“To get Kronos out, of course.”

“‘Of course’,” Percy echoes.

“And now I’m making up for it,” says Luke coolly. “Just like Percy, right, Clio?”

She gasps. “How did you—?”

“I eavesdropped,” he says blandly. “So make the right choice this time, Percy.”

Percy freezes for a moment, but eventually he nods. “We’ll all go.”

*

Luke places a hand against an inconspicuous pile of rock, and Percy has to admit, they could have searched this place for years without trying this spot. Percy is about to nudge Clio to start singing, since she’s got Apollo _and_ Hades blood in there somewhere, but Luke beats her to it, starting in on something that sets the boulders trembling. It’s weird and slow and sad, and it makes the hair stand up on the back of Percy’s neck to hear it in deserted Central Park. 

“I don’t recognize it,” Percy says, as the rocks part and Luke lets the tune fade away.

“You wouldn’t,” murmurs Luke. “It’s something Thalia sang to her daughters.”

Percy actually turns and stares at him at that. “You got really creepy.”

Luke smiles. “I’ve been the boogeyman to generations of demigods, right, Clio? I’m supposed to be creepy.” And so he sets down the long, dark steps, out of the weak sunlight and down into the Underworld.

The stairs are narrow and the way is dark, but Clio’s symbols of power glow steadily, casting a thin bubble of light over the three of them as they take the long, long stairs underneath the earth. 

“You’re not worried,” Percy notes, speaking as quietly as he can to Luke so that his voice won’t carry along the slippery stone, “about someone seeing us.”

Luke snorts derisively. “The Titans don’t care about the dead,” he laughs, “and they have four thousand years of memories of Tartarus. No. Hecate should be in charge here, but she spends her time with the humans, teaching a few of them witchcraft and starting her own cult followings. The Underworld goes on the way it always has and always will.”

“It’s restless,” Clio says. “The dead need a ruler.”

“You can tell?” Percy frowns.

She nods. “We don’t do much with the dead – it attracts more monsters than the dead can handle, even if you summon someone really powerful – so I’ve never tried before, but I can’t ignore it here. This place is about to burst.”

“Ominous,” says Luke.

“For the Titans,” Percy adds firmly.

They don’t say much more until they reach the foot of the stairs, where the stone gave way to black sand and the River Styx churned off to the side. “Don’t fall in,” Luke grins, clapping Clio on the back.

She skitters away from him, scowling. “You did. Percy did. Maybe I should.”

Luke’s smile goes twisted. “The first generation of lost demigods thought about it. But it’s not as easy as hopping in and out.”

“It hurts,” Percy breathes. His hand runs over the small of his back, but what hurts most is his brief vision of Annabeth’s face, peering over a canoe. He’s sure Luke is remembering the same thing, or something like it. 

“You need a connection to the mortal world,” he goes on, “and they’ve lost it.”

“It’d be useful,” she insists, but Percy is able to talk her out of taking a dip by pointing out that while she has eleven symbols of power, she doesn’t need any more help to be invincible. 

It’s strange, returning to the destination of his first quest so many years later. The endless emptiness and the howls drifting from the Fields of Punishment no longer scare him, because he’s faced the prospect of eternity watching civilization crumbling, and seen his city crumble to the ground. No one disturbs them as they skirt around Erebos to Tartarus, and at the same passageway where Percy once struggled to keep Luke’s shoes from dragging Grover into the pit, he now willingly follows Luke down the shale and into the blackness, with Clio clinging to his hand.

Down.

And down.

And down… 

“We’re here,” Luke says, finally, when the light pack on Percy’s back and the trident in his hand feels heavier than the Empire State Building and the chill is oppressive and biting.

“It’s so dark,” Clio whispers. Even the silver and gold glows of Artemis and Apollo’s bows have gone out, and if it weren’t for the curse of Achillles, Percy’s pretty sure her vice-grip on his wrist would have snapped a few bones.

“Not for long,” says Percy. He presses down with a _click_ that rings through all of Tartarus.

The little flame from the lighter is only a tiny spark in the darkness at first. But then a pair of small, pale hands reaches out to it, tentatively at first, as though disbelieving. Clio lets out a muffled shout of surprise behind him as those slender fingers warm themselves in the tiny golden glow.

“Lady Hestia,” Percy says. “Fire from the sacred hearth.”

The tiny hands scoop up the flame from the little plastic lighter. The fire surges excitedly in her cupped hands, illuminating the face of a small girl with big eyes that reflect the flickering light. “Thank you,” says Hestia, first born and youngest of wily Kronos, and blows gently on the miniature blaze that shines through her fingertips. 

It scatters into a million tiny lights that swirl around the three of them – Percy can see Clio’s face registering something like shock and wonder, Luke’s flickering with bitterness and longing, and Hestia’s beaming with absolute joy – first as specks, then flurry of golden snowflakes, then a swarm of radiant bees that dart away from the goddess of the hearth as one, launching themselves into the blackness of Tartarus. As Hestia raises her arms, they swoop and grow, as sparrows and eagles and great shimmering swans, and in their flight they illuminate weary forms, which bestir themselves with creaks and rustles. The million blazes kindled by Hestia’s breath settle in the furthest reaches of Tartarus, filling the void with dancing clusters of suns and stars. 

And in the light from Olympus, the crumpled figures stand.


	4. The Fires of War

**iv. the fires of war**

 

 _“Only by going too far, can one find out how far one can go.”_ (T.S. Eliot)

 

“The Olympians,” gasps Clio.

The gods murmur, quietly at first, after their centuries of silence. But their voices gather force, calling out to Hestia. _Sister. Aunt. What have you done?_ And then:

“Wait. _Dude_ ,” blinks Apollo. “Is that Percy?”

“Peter Johnson?”

“Luke…”

“He—”

“—who is she? Do we know her?—”

“—is Kronos mocking us?”

Clio presses closer against Percy, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Luke’s face set into a scowl. Probably, he thinks, he should have figured out what to say before this, or thought about how the Olympians would take Kronos’s former vessel, the prophesied child of the eldest gods, and a stranger bristling with symbols of power popping up in Tartarus. He’s fairly certain that Luke remembered to think this far ahead and just didn’t mention it, which is pretty low on the list of jerk things Luke has done but still sets Percy’s teeth on edge. He’s about to start on an explanation that he hopes doesn’t sound lame when a new figure calls out.

“Percy!” The voice is warped and creaky, but Percy would know it anywhere, even after hundreds of years. He turns and sees Poseidon there, white-haired and emaciated. Gone are the Hawaiian shirt and the floppy fisherman’s cap. Instead, he’s wrapped in gray rags that look like they’ve been soaking up the darkness of Tartarus since day one down here. Percy swallows hard and crosses the short distance to his dad, his footsteps echoing off the dark walls all around them.

“Dad,” he says, suddenly hoarse, “I’ve got something for you.”

He holds out the trident, and, at first, Poseidon seems barely able to reach for it. But as his hand comes closer to the weapon, he stops trembling. The trident’s glow washes out the age spots on his hands, or maybe it washes them away entirely. As he clasps his fingers around it, a gust of sea breeze whips through Tartarus, cold and sharp. 

“My son,” Poseidon, the Earth-shaker, rumbles, “what are you doing here?”

Percy steps back, letting go of the trident, and hopes his actions speak loud enough that his words don’t have to be one-hundred percent heroic. “We’re going to fix things. We’re going to defeat Kronos.” Luke adds nothing, but the unspoken _like we should have a long, long time ago_ still hangs in the air between them. 

“ _Fix_ things?” Demeter rustles. “ _Fix_ them? Boy! Things _can’t be fixed_!”

“They can!” Clio cries. “We did what the prophecy said! We found your symbols of power so you could fight the Titans!”

“Fight them!” the goddess quavers, which is enough to force Clio a step back behind Luke. “We’re hardly fit to fight the Titans…!”

“I feel fine!” Poseidon booms. “As good as new – and much better than start of the first Titanomachy.”

“He’s right, Demeter,” says Hestia, the lights flickering playfully around her. “We could smell like mustard.” Her red eyes peer curiously at Clio, moving over her collection of superpowered magical objects. “But perhaps you should let my sister discover that for herself.”

“Right,” Clio squeaks, but inhales deeply and reopens her eyes with a little more confidence in her posture. She pulls the golden charm necklace over her head and cups it in her palms, holding it out to Demeter like an offering. The goddess glances around Tartarus, pausing for a moment as the other gods murmur things like _Kronus’s host_ and _a trap, a trap_. But the symbol of power sparkles like the summer sun in Clio’s hands, and apparently it’s too much for Demeter to resist, because she reaches for it, and it spins around her in a flurry of light, weaving golden threads into her chiton and wicker into her fair hair. 

“ _Oh_ ,” cries Demeter, and Tartarus bursts into bloom.

Clio is mobbed in a heartbeat. She dispenses the most powerful objects in the world like candy, until the one-bleak prison is filled with wild animals and echoing songs and minor gods swarming the Olympians, and Clio herself is left with just one symbol of power. “Wait,” she says, hands tight around the Master Bolt. “Someone is…”

“Oh,” Luke says lightly, “I forgot to mention that part.”

*

One of the perks of arming almost all of the Olympian Council is that travel is a breeze. Hold tight to a god’s arm, blink, and pop out of Tartarus and up the side of Mount Tam, where Gaia and Ouranos press close together. At the base of the roiling clouds is Zeus, his dark hair streaked with white and his teeth gritted under the weight of the sky. Hera bounds to his side at once, pressing their foreheads together and speaking very quickly in ancient Greek, while beside Percy, Athena and Ares shift with sudden discomfort. 

“We can’t fight without him.”

“We can’t win without him.”

“And _I’m_ not going under there…”

“Ah, the Olympians,” says Luke, murmuring into Percy’s ear, “I knew they wouldn’t change.”

“You helped bring them back,” he mutters.

“The alternative is worse,” Luke laughs, and Clio must have heard that, because she presses closer to the two of them. 

“What’s funny about it?” she frowns.

“Let me tell you what happens next,” Luke smiles, tugging both of them away from the Olympians. “They need Zeus to win, but none of them will take his burden. And do you know what they’ll do?” Clio shakes her head. “They leave the dirty work to a demigod, of course.”

Clio gulps, but glowers at him resolutely. “I’ll do it.”

“Not long enough for the gods to win,” Percy says, his hand brushing the spot where, for a while, he’d had a shock of white hair. He hates to acknowledge it, but Luke is right, _and_ Clio can’t handle this burden long enough to stop the sky from crushing the earth and making a battle between the gods and Titans totally irrelevant. “Ouranos will crush you in a few hours.”

“But Zeus can’t stay there!” she hisses.

Percy puts a hand on her shoulder. “He won’t.” He steps toward the Olympians and clears his throat. “I’m going to replace him.”

Up on the hill, Hera turns in a shimmer of peacock hues, and the rest of the gods stop their unhappy chatter to listen. “You don’t have to do this,” says Poseidon unhappily. 

“I’ll—”

“Of course he doesn’t,” says Luke smoothly, stepping up the slope. “You didn’t let me finish, did you, Percy? The thing is, you’ve probably had enough torture for the next millennia.”

“I can handle it,” he insists.

“Oh,” Luke laughs, “I know you can. But let someone _else_ be the hero for once.” The words hit him like a punch, and the glint in Luke’s eyes tells Percy that he knows he’s won. “Visit me?” says Luke, with his weird, bitter half-smile, reaching for Percy. “I _did_ keep you company.”

“I’ll do better,” he says, stepping back. “I’ll bring Atlas back for you.”

“Yes, you did like to one-up me,” Luke nods, but Zeus cuts both of them off.

“Hurry _up_!”

Luke rolls his eyes and reaches into his boot, pulling out a thin blade of celestial bronze. Percy recognizes it in a heartbeat, because he saw Annabeth use it a hundred times. “Go save the world for her,” he says, pressing it into Percy’s hands, “and then think about the prophecy.”

He closes his blue eyes, and steps under the weight of the sky.

Zeus bursts forth from between Gaia and Ouranos and seizes the Master Bolt from Clio’s hands. “ _Kronos_!” he thunders, because the king of the gods is not one for subtlety, and so the second Titanomachy begins.

*

( _Someday, people will invoke the Muses and sing stories about this war._

_They’ll sing about mighty Zeus, King of the Gods, hurling his thunderbolts against the black stone of Mount Orthys, and how the whole of the sky came alive with forked tongues of lightning. They’ll sing about the waves that tore down cliffs and shores and whole mountain ranges, and how all the dead of all the ages hurled themselves at the monsters that had overrun their world._

_Everywhere the light of the West had ever touched, they’ll chant, the battle raged. From Greece to what had once been Rome and across Europe to the Americas, of course, but the world shook, too, wherever anyone had touched Plato or Moliere or Schultz. Everywhere the civilization of Olympus had ever helped to shape, the world held its breath._

_And the world will remember it until the Earth crumbles away._

_For a while, people will whisper about watching the shafts of sunlight and moonlight that fell like hail. And then the children of those who were there will write down what their parents told them, about the growing things that flailed like wild against mad invisible foes. And_ their _children will read the stories of the cunning plans of gray-eyed Athena and the masterful hammerstrokes of Hephaestus that forged weapons out of starlight and cliff faces._

_At cozy hearths, the tale will be told and retold, always changing. Some will say that Ares was a fearsome warrior, others that he screamed and ran like a coward after he was wounded by golden Hyperion. School teachers will read sanitized accounts of the whole affair, which dully record that Aphrodite’s grace made the Titan of the West repent his offenses against the gods, while children of a certain age will snicker and read bawdier accounts of Aphrodite seducing the Titan with a wink and tying him up with a silver scarf and slitting his throat as revenge for making Ares howl._

_All of the stories, of course, will mention Clio, the audacious mortal who travelled the globe and the heavens and the darkest places of the world to restore the gods. They’ll call her clever as Athena and as beautiful as Aphrodite, and give her so many epithets that students years later will grumble at having to learn them all as they read about her quest and the battle. The stories will agree that she dueled with Atlas for a week before the goddess Hera kicked him back under his old burden and freed Clio’s guide to the Underworld to disappear into history, and that with her great sword Anaklusmos she rapped Prometheus on the head so sharply that he never saw the future again. They will say, that as wily Kronos faced the whole of the Olympian Council at the end of the Titanomachy, it was her unexpected hands that plucked his scythe from his mighty grip, because heroes alone have the power to do whatever they’re bold enough to try, and Clio was the boldest of them all._ )

*

“Young demigod,” says Zeus, “you have done something wholly unprecedented.”

“It wasn’t all that much, I mean, I didn’t even get any limbs chopped off—”

He holds up a hand to silence her, and she falls awkwardly silent, shuffling her feet. “You have brought your forbearers from the lowest places of this world and restored them to the great heights of Mount Olympus.”

“But it’s not like I did it alone! Percy helped, and Luke, too—”

“Clio,” says Percy, taking her hand. She looks confused, and he doesn’t want her to be confused. He knows what Zeus is trying to get across, and he wants her to understand it, too – the whole sweeping enormity of what she’s done. The curse Kronos gave him hundreds of years ago, to watch the world fade away, has been lifted, all because she’s jumpstarted the whole thing and brought about a new age. “We _wanted_ to fix things, but us just wanting didn’t change anything. Not until _you_ did something about it.”

“Percy…”

“You did what I couldn’t, Clio. You saved Olympus.” 

“And for that,” intones Zeus, “we are in your debt.”

“Except that we don’t really like being in debt,” mutters Mr. D.

Zeus’s glare shoots lightning bolts, but his expression softens at he turns back to Clio. “This Council does pay its dues. We owe you a gift from Olympus.”

Her brow furrows. “A gift?”

“Immortality.” 

Clio’s jaw drops, and she goes red all the way to her ears. “That’s – that’s really cool.”

“You would see the West rebuild,” offers Athena.

“And great romances,” sighs Aphrodite.

“And some really wicked sunrises,” adds Apollo.

“You’ll be there when the world goes back to normal,” Percy says, “and better than normal.” 

Her chin is trembling and her eyes are bright with tears. “Yes,” she squeaks, “please.” And then she buries her face in her hands, rubbing at her eyes with her gloves.

Zeus takes her hands, and holds them until she looks up, tears running down her face. He places a palm against her forehead. “Last and greatest child of the old West,” he blesses, “the new world is yours to watch over.”

*

( _The curious thing is, when people call up the daughters of Mnemosyme, they’ll never remember anything the way old Mnemosyme herself does. The name_ Percy _will occur in just three of the most classic accounts, and the name_ Luke _in only two. As time goes by and fact become story becomes myth, little old men and women with gray hair and glasses will decide that the two figures who led Clio to the start of her quest were some remnants of the first rule of the Olympians, with a few dissidents arguing that the two are simply aspects of the hero Clio’s own psyche, and, once, a scandalously young, sandy-haired academic insisting that the name_ Percy _is derived from a myth cycle even older than the quest of Clio._

_But there will only be one hero in the story._

_Luke is not the hero._

_Percy is not the hero._

_And someday, when people invoke the Muses, they’ll tell stories of a city between two rivers and close to the sea, a once-proud place where buildings crumbled into heaps of steel and glass, not knowing that they’re repeating part of a story told to Clio herself, the story that saved the world. They’ll remember that brave Clio approached the tallest building and reached lonely Mount Olympus…_

_“That’s her getting to the home of the gods, right?” a hero-to-be will recall, filling with relief at recognizing an image on the museum wall._

_“Yes,” boyish Mr. Castellan will say, his tired blue eyes fixed on the corner of the painting with a statue that looks to the ocean, as all his students but this one tune him out. “And what was she doing there?”_

_“She was looking for, um, something. Something on a cloud.”_

_“Someone,” he corrects. “And when she woke him…”_

_… but as powerful as a story can be, it isn’t time for us to call on the Muses just yet._ )


	5. Westward

**v. westward**

 

_"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." (Dr. Seuss)_

 

He turns to Hades. “Lord and uncle,” he says, formal as the first time they met, “you used to like threatening to kill me.”

“Water under the bridge, Jackson,” says Hades, arching a black eyebrow as the rest of the Olympians fall silent. “You’ve earned immortality a few times over.”

“But I never asked for it.”

Poseidon steps forward, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Percy…”

“ _And those who try to change their fates will find that only death awaits._ ” Percy shakes his head. “I’m tired, dad. I didn’t want to live this long.”

“You can’t die now,” cries Clio, bolting free from the cluster of Olympians. “We just _won_. You’re supposed to tell everyone how things are supposed to be. You’re supposed to share all the myths and the legends and you’re supposed to teach me how to be a hero. I don’t _want_ to be the only hero left. Percy, I’m just a kid, I don’t know how to do all this.”

He steps away from his father’s firm grip and opens his arms to her. She throws her arms around him, and he holds her close while she tries to stifle a round of sobs, stroking her hair and brushing away the tears in her eyes. “You don’t need me for that. You’ll remake the world the way _you_ want it to be. You’ll have your own stories to share. And you’re already a great hero.”

“You’re the only other hero left,” she says miserably. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“You won’t be for long,” he says, giving the Olympians a look that’s basically _You’re going to get back to that making heroes thing pretty fast, right?_ , to which most of them nod awkwardly. Hera rolls her eyes but says nothing. “So, uh. Don’t think we’re the last of the old heroes. You’ll be the first of the new ones.”

“Percy Jackson,” rumbles Zeus, “are you misquoting Star Wars at my great-great-great-granddaughter?”

“Okay,” Percy admits with a small smile, “there are a couple old stories that need to rerun on Hephaestus TV. But the rest you’ll make on your own.”

She laughs a little brokenly, and pulls away. “I’m going to miss you,” she sniffles. “I’m going to miss you _so much_.”

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her on the forehead, the most appropriate blessing he can think of. “You’ll be fine,” he promises. “You’re strong. The world you’ll build will be wonderful.” He turns back to the Lord of the Dead. “Uncle.”

Hades regards him thoughtfully, but for once, his black eyes are almost soft. “It is not within my power to remove your curse,” he notes. “The power to grant immortality is reserved for the whole of the Olympian Council, and that immortality can only be lifted by the whole of the Olympian Council.”

Percy looks at the assembled gods. “Can you start voting on that?”

“This is _ridiculous_ ,” huffs Demeter. “With all Percy Jackson has done, I _certainly_ don’t want him dying on us.” A murmur of assent runs through the crowd; Ares bellows “Hear hear!” before Artemis elbows him in the gut.

To Percy’s surprise, it’s Aphrodite’s voice that cuts through the crowd. Somehow, her centuries of imprisonment have made her lovelier; there’s a new quiet grace to her that Percy remembers from a month on Ogygia, long ago, and her words are ringing and confident. “I’ll approve your request,” she says. When Percy looks at her, her skin is tanned and her hair is the color of honey, curling around her shoulders. Her eyes are the color of stormclouds rolling towards the sea. His face must be an open book, because Clio takes his hand in hers and squeezes reassuringly, but he can still feel his heart breaking with every movement the goddess makes. “There’s someone who’s been looking for you in Elysium for far too long.”

“ _Oh_ ,” whispers Athena. 

He nods at both of them, and the rest of the Olympians fall silent.

Athena clears her throat and speaks again, this time more loudly. “If Kronos had not forced this on him, we would have let him wish for immortality. And if his wish, now, is to die…”

“Will anyone object to granting that wish now?” asks Aphrodite. Ares looks like he’s about to protest losing the chance to rag on Percy for eternity, but she flashes some extra leg at him and he goes red and quiet. No one else objects.

“Then mortality is yours,” says Poseidon his voice breaking like waves on the beach. As his arms fold around his son, Percy feels the same soft sea-breeze, smiling warmth that he knew as a baby in New York City. He relaxes completely into that hug, and, enveloped in its love, doesn’t flinch when a rush of power sweeps through him. It calls forth an infinite number of microscopic changes; his body thaws out of two hundred years of unchangingness, and immortality is washed out of every cell of him. When that tide ebbs, taking the old curse with it, he doesn’t feel any weaker. He just feels… like himself, for the first time in far too long.

“Dad…” There are so many things that _could_ be said. That he hopes his dad is proud. That he still feels bad for littering at the beach when he was six. That he’s sorry to leave like this, but there’s something calling him off on another journey. So he hugs his father as tightly as he can, committing the smell of the sea and feeling of a father’s love to memory for the trip west of the west. “Thanks dad.” 

And then he turns to his uncle once again.

“I’m ready,” he says.

The Lord of the Dead pulls a single golden key from his robes. Percy has just enough time to smile at the thought of it, to remember an adventure from a long time ago, before the key brushes against his skin, and the scene changes.

*

“Fancy seeing you again,” says Charon, stuffing a distinctly rumpled looking narcissus into a button hole on his wrinkled, expensive suit. 

“It should be the last time,” Percy smiles, flipping him a drachma and stepping into the elevator. He takes the familiar journey across the river to the long lines, petting Cerberus along the way. To his surprise, the lines part before him, and there, sitting at the judges’ table, are the three first judges of the dead.

“Elysium,” says Aeacus.

“Elysium,” says Radamanthus.

“Bah,” glowers Minos, but Radamanthus thwaps him smartly on the head until he squeaks out “Elysium, Elysium!”

“Unless,” adds Aeacus, “you’d like to try for the Isles of the Blest.” 

He shakes his head. “I’m good, guys.”

“Well then,” pronounces Radamanthus, smacking an official-looking stamp on an official-looking piece of paper. “Percy Jackson, Elysium. Next!”

Percy knows the way to the high walls of the Elysian Fields on his own, but the three Furies themselves escort him. “Though before you go, sweetie,” says Alecto, pausing at the gate, “I have something for you.” She holds it out. It’s a math book. 

“Mrs. Dodds,” says Percy, “you shouldn’t have. Really. You shouldn’t have.” But she winks at him and flips through it, and when he sees that the answers are all filled in, he has to laugh; the Furies may spend a lot of time handing out punishment, but they still know a few things about paradise, and he guesses it’s appropriate to have had her with him at the start and the finish of things. He takes the book from her and steps into the Elysian Fields.

There’s a small crowd waiting for him, some faces familiar and others apparently just curious about the new arrival. But from the minute that he passes through the gate, he has eyes for one person only.

“Hey, Seaweed Brain,” says Annabeth. “What kept you?” 

 

**end.**


End file.
